Letters to the Churches

For the message about the execution-stake is nonsense to those in the process of being destroyed, but to us in the process of being saved it is the power of God.

Indeed, the Tanakh says, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and frustrate the intelligence of the intelligent.”

Where does that leave the philosopher, the Torah-teacher, or any of today’s thinkers? Hasn’t God made this world’s wisdom look pretty foolish?

For God’s wisdom ordained that the world, using its own wisdom, would not come to know him. Therefore God decided to use the “nonsense” of what we proclaim as his means of saving those who come to trust in it.

Precisely because Jews ask for signs and Greeks try to find wisdom,

we go on proclaiming a Messiah executed on a stake as a criminal! To Jews this is an obstacle, and to Greeks it is nonsense;

but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, this same Messiah is God’s power and God’s wisdom!

For God’s “nonsense” is wiser than humanity’s “wisdom.” And God’s “weakness” is stronger than humanity’s “strength.”

Just look at yourselves, brothers — look at those whom God has called! Not many of you are wise by the world’s standards, not many wield power or boast noble birth.

But God chose what the world considers nonsense in order to shame the wise; God chose what the world considers weak in order to shame the strong;

and God chose what the world looks down on as common or regards as nothing in order to bring to nothing what the world considers important;

so that no one should boast before God.

It is his doing that you are united with the Messiah Yeshua. He has become wisdom for us from God, and righteousness and holiness and redemption as well!

Therefore — as the Tanakh says — “Let anyone who wants to boast, boast about Adonai.”

As for me, brothers, when I arrived among you, it was not with surpassing eloquence or wisdom that I came announcing to you the previously concealed truth about God;

for I had decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Yeshua the Messiah, and even him only as someone who had been executed on a stake as a criminal.

Also I myself was with you as somebody weak, nervous and shaking all over from fear;

and neither the delivery nor the content of my message relied on compelling words of “wisdom” but on a demonstration of the power of the Spirit,

so that your trust might not rest on human wisdom but on God’s power.

Yet there is a wisdom that we are speaking to those who are mature enough for it. But it is not the wisdom of this world or of this world’s leaders, who are in the process of passing away.

On the contrary, we are communicating a secret wisdom from God which has been hidden until now but which, before history began, God had decreed would bring us glory.

Not one of this world’s leaders has understood it; because if they had, they would not have executed the Lord from whom this glory flows.

But, as the Tanakh says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard and no one’s heart has imagined all the things that God has prepared for those who love him.”

It is to us, however, that God has revealed these things. How? Through the Spirit. For the Spirit probes all things, even the profoundest depths of God.

For who knows the inner workings of a person except the person’s own spirit inside him? So too no one knows the inner workings of God except God’s Spirit.